Resonating with these words, what comes to me is how coaching and culture work interlink in my vision. The visual that I hold for my coaching work is that of tending to the edges of the village - many of us have been harmed by our respective communities, struggled with belonging, not developed the skills (for a lack of elders, and for many systemic reasons) to be in safe, dignified mutuality and interdependence. Coaching (at least the type I am familiar with, and many other healing modalities) can be a place of honoring and keeping us company where we are: in the bewilderment and grief of our lost belonging, and the alarmed aloneness of not knowing how to proceed. From there, it can help us build up our heart's muscle strength to return to community with new perspective, with a stronger capacity to be in relationship without abandoning ourselves or others, and to truly take our place with what we can contribute from the place of a settled nervous system, with nothing to prove. I look forward to reading your evolving exploration of this topic, Tad - thank you.
Mmmm I am so grateful for this Tad. And I find it interesting that in this essay I see you using in some ways the tools of the coach to make culture.
And my question of course comes into where do these blend and overlap? And can one make a profession from culture making? (Of course, as I can think of examples).. but then if folks like me start to think about culture making as a profession, it likely begins to become something else.
In my later 30s, I’m becoming ever more faced with real questions around mature finances, “getting my shit together” after spending my adult life wondering about how to make culture, and it is seductive to try and be more financially stable, or perhaps better said, it is seductive to think I need to bend more towards coaching in order to do that.. and maybe I do. And even though there is as degree of apparent subtext, nowhere in your essay did you actually say that coaching is wrong or bad or not to be sought after or practiced. And you admit upfront that you’ve been a coach for a long time.
And so the question comes to me around integrity.. where does integrity come from? How does One know if they are in integrity in their practice in their profession, especially if it’s not a personal thing (but also is), and is not even necessarily a thing confirmed by a close circle of kin? Maybe a different way to word the question is, how does one walk professionally with dignity? What does that feel like? How would we know when we are there?
Those are very fine questions. I love, in particular, 'where does integrity come from?' Indeed. Is it an indwelling thing? Is alignment with myself enough? If it feels true for me but goes against my people - what then? And what if my people are very sick and unwell? In the end, I'd lean towards trusting my inner sense of things with an eye towards the very real possibility that this inner voice is not my own and not always trustworthy. I suppose discerning which voices are trustworthy, within and without, might be the beginnings of culture-making. Such gorgeous questions. I see you walking with those questions with a rare honesty and have since I met you.
John, it’s a both/and. After a year long sit on my farm in 2011, forfeiting my law license because I was sure I didn’t want to spend my life as a lawyer or helping other lawyers get rich, I realized it was a both/and. My purpose was to being culture change into my work with the lawyers I was uniquely suited to work with. So I became the culture change, and then did my CLE to reinstate my license, and then began once again to work with lawyers and build a big company to serve them and shift our collective culture. I’ve never once said those words to them, though, and nor do I need to do so.
Thank you Tad. I look forward to circling up w you at some point in the future when I launch my podcast, as I think you’d love to be on it. “Inheritance. Redefined.” Is the title.
Very timely for me. Thank you! I resonate with so much, and find myself questioning so much as well...paradox rather than contradiction feels worthy of consideration for what I'm experiencing.
The idea that "Cultural work is designed to help us become something beautiful as a gift to the world" struck me, as well as the idea of culture work being about the 'long story.'
In my coaching work, it's all about the 'long story' and 'becoming the beautiful gift' that we're here to be. My membership supports holistically addressing the 'chronic issues and feeding the health' of those participating, to both alleviate and prevent the 'long term troubles.' Yet there is a declaration of "I need this" among the women in the group."
Guidance comes from me as facilitator/coach, and from the wisdom of the women connected in the living learning that evolves as they do. While the quick fix and magic pill are no doubt longed for, there's an understanding that the real change happens with practice and patience, one small step at a time toward a new ontology for the sake of better understanding and being a small contribution or hopeful beacon in a world we long to feel a part of and serve.
My coaching offers a general framework of core principals (some may be interpreted as 'crystal clear' and others not so much) to orient oneself, and from there one begins to see how they are impacted by the Laws of Nature just all of life is, and how they'll navigate and interact with 'all that is' as best they can...the land, the people, the cosmos, themselves. There is space for mystery, in fact necessity, for being fully hum-man...of the humus/land and of the supernatural/mana...in connection with 'all that is.'
These are the thoughts that have come to me. Perhaps it's my confusion that makes marketing my 'coaching' challenging. Perhaps it's not 'coaching,' but rather 'Soul work,' not just at the personal level, but at the level of the Soul of the World. There are practicalities included, which certainly feel more like 'coaching' and clear steps toward a result, and those are woven into the bigger picture that asks "For the sake of what am I doing this?" That question considers the whole of life and how we fit into it, serve it, receive from it, and dance with it. That question feels a bit like the Grail question of "Whom does the Grail serve?" that reintegrates the fragmented parts of Soul.
I'd love to form a question here and get an answer, yet something tells me that perhaps it's living in the question that makes the most sense for now. I welcome thoughts, and thank you for your wisdom.
I am slightly wary however of the role of the elder within culture-making, as you articulated it, who might 'test' the person to see if they sink into bitterness or self-pity. I was recently the recipient of one of these "tests" by a very respected teacher we all know - I had traveled a long way to take a course they had set up, and they showed up for an hour at the beginning of the week and an hour at the end. At the end, they confronted me with feedback that was not healing or helpful - but I wanted to take it on the chin to fit into the culture - but man, was I in fawn and freeze and my nervous system was haywire for months. Other participants came up to me afterwards to check on me because they said the feedback appeared "violent". None of the staff said anything. This teacher sits on hallowed ground. I did not have a relationship with this person and there was a way in which their power protected them from any self reflection and put the onus of their projection and judgment solely on my shoulders. And their form of "culture making" is well and good but gosh it didn't meet me where I was at. Or I didn't meet it where they were at - who is responsible for what?
Reminds me of Jenkinson's thought that part of current culture making is longing for/attempting to create the thing we have no experience of. I assume that I was treated by this teacher in a way that they may have longed for, or in a way that they had also been wounded.
So, I'm wary of the "teachers" of culture making - and the myopic relational exchange that left me reeling for some 3 months. And wondering about culture making being more local, more relational, and more sustained over a period of time. And how can culture making actually serve the people, as wounded and developmentally impaired as we might be.
Thank you for this really thoughtful piece. I have been struggling to articulate my work as coaching and this has given me much food for thought. May I gently point out something that I snagged upon at the end of your piece: your use of the words crazy, mad and sane. Civilisation has made 'sanity' and 'rationality' its benchmark and any abheration of thought or behaviour is labelled 'crazy' or 'mad' (and subsequently locked up and/or suppressed and contained with meds.) Folk wisdom was labelled as mad, irrational and dangerous - just as madness is now painted as dangerous. My work is within the mad movement which invites people to understand the mainstream mental health system as a tool of empire, and to reframe madness as a signal in the noise which is speaking truth to power, much as the fool spoke truth to the king. Civilisation tells us that mad is bad and I invite you to explore the possibility that mad is truthful rather than bad, and to use the language of mad/sane/crazy more carefully.
Spot on Tad. This resonates a lot, and it also strengthens my intuitions and my path forward. So many thanks for that.
I've seen so many good-hearted people become coaches over the years, that at some point I decided to look at the phenomenon with more curiosity and less cynicism than I had previously done. I started asking myself deeper questions.
'Could coaching be some sort of expression of this longing to heal that many of us have?' 'Could it also be symbolizing a longing to get that real forgoten (or more precisely, usurped), 'thing' back?' 'Is coaching, in a way, some counterfeit artifact that gives us the illusion that we can have the cake and eat it (as in doing meaningful work which also gets well paid)?'
This set of reflections is in dialogue in my head and body now with the book I am reading right now: Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta, and also with much of what I've read from adrienne maree brown, Prentice Hemphill, Audre Lorde, and many other queer, BIPOC women. Thank you, Tad, for articulating these ideas and questions here in this space. As a coach, facilitator, trainer, and "organizational development consultant," and also a (white, female-bodied, queer, neurodivergent) person committed to continually working to deconstruct colonialism and dominance culture, I often find myself dancing between the work of helping people navigate, survive, and heal inside the insane civilization we live in, and helping them reach for something else - something you are naming here as culture-creation, or at least, culture-longing, or perceiving the need for culture. I am deeply grateful for all of the folks who are farther down this path, reaching out with their words and stories and other creations to help us see what's possible.
I’m supposing these distinctions could be very painful to recognize, as a coach?
How do coaches who care about culture reconcile with their profession? Those who see their work as values-driven or helping to put chinks in the armour of “Tke Machine”?
Compartmentalize and press on?
Or can there be coaching work which contributes to the Great Work Of Culture Making?
This sums up the dilemma I've been facing with my work all these many years: a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.
Advocating for nature, especially the unseen small creatures and their ecological relationships, their importance in keeping our Earth and its ecosystems healthy, and how we need to change culture around living on our beautiful, amazing, exquisitely complex, little Earth, to include all the forms of life is sooo hard to fit into a coaching framework.
I'm feeling a palpable sense of relief from reading your post.
I appreciate the point and counter point… a left and a right… one analogy reading this is going from boxing to defeat my opponent and shifting into paddling a mysterious river…
Left and right. My frames that echo this are therapy (20years for me learning and applying this trade) and mentoring (10 years of being courted and loved into being by mentors - alive and dead, human and of nature)…
I’d like to conclude that both have a place and that I can keep one foot — as I have for a while — in both worlds. But I honestly feel myself yearning the retire the first endeavour and live more fully in the mystery of the later.
Another analogy that comes to mind is studying martial arts and ethical use of violence. There can be a mechanistic way of breaking it down and repeating of patterns towards the hope of mastery. And yet, when I spar or am met in the real world by conflict, all concepts seem inadequate and less helpful….
All there is is an encounter, my hope to stay open, attentive and learn from what transpires and that I come out of it not too badly injured so I get to keep learning and apply my theories into what can help it be resolved better next time…
You got me into a mood reading this… thank you for spinning this web to lean into before bed.
Thank you Tad. WIth my training as an executive coach, I can recognize most of how you describe coaching as accurate. However, there are points where my training and style definitely diverge from what you've shared here. The culture work, on the other hand, rings true with every statement. In fact, you helped me clarify some important differences in my work with folks, and I appreciate it.
Aye. It's important to note that not all coaching approaches or schools have the same underlying worldview. Some are much more culturally informed than others.
Too true. SO many variations on a theme. Even as I was reading your descriptions of coaching I noticed that only some of them apply to you. I wondered if you only included those that applied to you, and your particularly brilliant method, if the entire piece would read differently. I imagine it would. Yours appears to be much more culturally informed, though is very aware of the mainstream method for advertising, marketing, and sales. I've always appreciated your rendering on the matter.
This was what I was going to comment. The way I was trained as a coach and how I coach (which I call Wayfinding in a nod to my mentor) is very, very different than the coaching you described. And yet what you described is something I see a lot of in the coaching space.
I also deeply appreciated your take on culture. Such important work. Thank you for sharing.🙏
I opened your article with deep interest, as I work in both areas.
I close it with a deeper understanding of why I have resisted much of the ‘coach’ approach for the last decade, despite being a coach (and counsellor) throughout.
For every point you made, my spirit cringed at the coach description (recognizing where I’ve seen it enacted by peers and community around me) and sighed with relief and resonance at the cultural description.
It may be time to change my language of how I refer to my work, which is highly personal, yet imperatively contextualized by culture and impacts - both way.
Resonating with these words, what comes to me is how coaching and culture work interlink in my vision. The visual that I hold for my coaching work is that of tending to the edges of the village - many of us have been harmed by our respective communities, struggled with belonging, not developed the skills (for a lack of elders, and for many systemic reasons) to be in safe, dignified mutuality and interdependence. Coaching (at least the type I am familiar with, and many other healing modalities) can be a place of honoring and keeping us company where we are: in the bewilderment and grief of our lost belonging, and the alarmed aloneness of not knowing how to proceed. From there, it can help us build up our heart's muscle strength to return to community with new perspective, with a stronger capacity to be in relationship without abandoning ourselves or others, and to truly take our place with what we can contribute from the place of a settled nervous system, with nothing to prove. I look forward to reading your evolving exploration of this topic, Tad - thank you.
Thank you for articulating this.
It’s how I feel too, but you’ve expressed it better than I could.
Mmmm I am so grateful for this Tad. And I find it interesting that in this essay I see you using in some ways the tools of the coach to make culture.
And my question of course comes into where do these blend and overlap? And can one make a profession from culture making? (Of course, as I can think of examples).. but then if folks like me start to think about culture making as a profession, it likely begins to become something else.
In my later 30s, I’m becoming ever more faced with real questions around mature finances, “getting my shit together” after spending my adult life wondering about how to make culture, and it is seductive to try and be more financially stable, or perhaps better said, it is seductive to think I need to bend more towards coaching in order to do that.. and maybe I do. And even though there is as degree of apparent subtext, nowhere in your essay did you actually say that coaching is wrong or bad or not to be sought after or practiced. And you admit upfront that you’ve been a coach for a long time.
And so the question comes to me around integrity.. where does integrity come from? How does One know if they are in integrity in their practice in their profession, especially if it’s not a personal thing (but also is), and is not even necessarily a thing confirmed by a close circle of kin? Maybe a different way to word the question is, how does one walk professionally with dignity? What does that feel like? How would we know when we are there?
Those are very fine questions. I love, in particular, 'where does integrity come from?' Indeed. Is it an indwelling thing? Is alignment with myself enough? If it feels true for me but goes against my people - what then? And what if my people are very sick and unwell? In the end, I'd lean towards trusting my inner sense of things with an eye towards the very real possibility that this inner voice is not my own and not always trustworthy. I suppose discerning which voices are trustworthy, within and without, might be the beginnings of culture-making. Such gorgeous questions. I see you walking with those questions with a rare honesty and have since I met you.
John, it’s a both/and. After a year long sit on my farm in 2011, forfeiting my law license because I was sure I didn’t want to spend my life as a lawyer or helping other lawyers get rich, I realized it was a both/and. My purpose was to being culture change into my work with the lawyers I was uniquely suited to work with. So I became the culture change, and then did my CLE to reinstate my license, and then began once again to work with lawyers and build a big company to serve them and shift our collective culture. I’ve never once said those words to them, though, and nor do I need to do so.
Bless your beautiful work in the world Ali.
Thank you Tad. I look forward to circling up w you at some point in the future when I launch my podcast, as I think you’d love to be on it. “Inheritance. Redefined.” Is the title.
I'd love to be on your podcast. Or anything else you offer. You're a gem.
Very timely for me. Thank you! I resonate with so much, and find myself questioning so much as well...paradox rather than contradiction feels worthy of consideration for what I'm experiencing.
The idea that "Cultural work is designed to help us become something beautiful as a gift to the world" struck me, as well as the idea of culture work being about the 'long story.'
In my coaching work, it's all about the 'long story' and 'becoming the beautiful gift' that we're here to be. My membership supports holistically addressing the 'chronic issues and feeding the health' of those participating, to both alleviate and prevent the 'long term troubles.' Yet there is a declaration of "I need this" among the women in the group."
Guidance comes from me as facilitator/coach, and from the wisdom of the women connected in the living learning that evolves as they do. While the quick fix and magic pill are no doubt longed for, there's an understanding that the real change happens with practice and patience, one small step at a time toward a new ontology for the sake of better understanding and being a small contribution or hopeful beacon in a world we long to feel a part of and serve.
My coaching offers a general framework of core principals (some may be interpreted as 'crystal clear' and others not so much) to orient oneself, and from there one begins to see how they are impacted by the Laws of Nature just all of life is, and how they'll navigate and interact with 'all that is' as best they can...the land, the people, the cosmos, themselves. There is space for mystery, in fact necessity, for being fully hum-man...of the humus/land and of the supernatural/mana...in connection with 'all that is.'
These are the thoughts that have come to me. Perhaps it's my confusion that makes marketing my 'coaching' challenging. Perhaps it's not 'coaching,' but rather 'Soul work,' not just at the personal level, but at the level of the Soul of the World. There are practicalities included, which certainly feel more like 'coaching' and clear steps toward a result, and those are woven into the bigger picture that asks "For the sake of what am I doing this?" That question considers the whole of life and how we fit into it, serve it, receive from it, and dance with it. That question feels a bit like the Grail question of "Whom does the Grail serve?" that reintegrates the fragmented parts of Soul.
I'd love to form a question here and get an answer, yet something tells me that perhaps it's living in the question that makes the most sense for now. I welcome thoughts, and thank you for your wisdom.
thank you for this Tad.
I am slightly wary however of the role of the elder within culture-making, as you articulated it, who might 'test' the person to see if they sink into bitterness or self-pity. I was recently the recipient of one of these "tests" by a very respected teacher we all know - I had traveled a long way to take a course they had set up, and they showed up for an hour at the beginning of the week and an hour at the end. At the end, they confronted me with feedback that was not healing or helpful - but I wanted to take it on the chin to fit into the culture - but man, was I in fawn and freeze and my nervous system was haywire for months. Other participants came up to me afterwards to check on me because they said the feedback appeared "violent". None of the staff said anything. This teacher sits on hallowed ground. I did not have a relationship with this person and there was a way in which their power protected them from any self reflection and put the onus of their projection and judgment solely on my shoulders. And their form of "culture making" is well and good but gosh it didn't meet me where I was at. Or I didn't meet it where they were at - who is responsible for what?
Reminds me of Jenkinson's thought that part of current culture making is longing for/attempting to create the thing we have no experience of. I assume that I was treated by this teacher in a way that they may have longed for, or in a way that they had also been wounded.
So, I'm wary of the "teachers" of culture making - and the myopic relational exchange that left me reeling for some 3 months. And wondering about culture making being more local, more relational, and more sustained over a period of time. And how can culture making actually serve the people, as wounded and developmentally impaired as we might be.
Beautifully said. I hear you. Yes. There's that too.
Thank you for this really thoughtful piece. I have been struggling to articulate my work as coaching and this has given me much food for thought. May I gently point out something that I snagged upon at the end of your piece: your use of the words crazy, mad and sane. Civilisation has made 'sanity' and 'rationality' its benchmark and any abheration of thought or behaviour is labelled 'crazy' or 'mad' (and subsequently locked up and/or suppressed and contained with meds.) Folk wisdom was labelled as mad, irrational and dangerous - just as madness is now painted as dangerous. My work is within the mad movement which invites people to understand the mainstream mental health system as a tool of empire, and to reframe madness as a signal in the noise which is speaking truth to power, much as the fool spoke truth to the king. Civilisation tells us that mad is bad and I invite you to explore the possibility that mad is truthful rather than bad, and to use the language of mad/sane/crazy more carefully.
I think you might enjoy this essay: https://thira.ca/files/2014/08/Colonization-Article-CNPR-Revised1.pdf
really good article, thank you! :-)
Good grist for the mill.
Spot on Tad. This resonates a lot, and it also strengthens my intuitions and my path forward. So many thanks for that.
I've seen so many good-hearted people become coaches over the years, that at some point I decided to look at the phenomenon with more curiosity and less cynicism than I had previously done. I started asking myself deeper questions.
'Could coaching be some sort of expression of this longing to heal that many of us have?' 'Could it also be symbolizing a longing to get that real forgoten (or more precisely, usurped), 'thing' back?' 'Is coaching, in a way, some counterfeit artifact that gives us the illusion that we can have the cake and eat it (as in doing meaningful work which also gets well paid)?'
This set of reflections is in dialogue in my head and body now with the book I am reading right now: Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta, and also with much of what I've read from adrienne maree brown, Prentice Hemphill, Audre Lorde, and many other queer, BIPOC women. Thank you, Tad, for articulating these ideas and questions here in this space. As a coach, facilitator, trainer, and "organizational development consultant," and also a (white, female-bodied, queer, neurodivergent) person committed to continually working to deconstruct colonialism and dominance culture, I often find myself dancing between the work of helping people navigate, survive, and heal inside the insane civilization we live in, and helping them reach for something else - something you are naming here as culture-creation, or at least, culture-longing, or perceiving the need for culture. I am deeply grateful for all of the folks who are farther down this path, reaching out with their words and stories and other creations to help us see what's possible.
All true . But… OUCH!
I’m supposing these distinctions could be very painful to recognize, as a coach?
How do coaches who care about culture reconcile with their profession? Those who see their work as values-driven or helping to put chinks in the armour of “Tke Machine”?
Compartmentalize and press on?
Or can there be coaching work which contributes to the Great Work Of Culture Making?
Those are the questions.
This sums up the dilemma I've been facing with my work all these many years: a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.
Advocating for nature, especially the unseen small creatures and their ecological relationships, their importance in keeping our Earth and its ecosystems healthy, and how we need to change culture around living on our beautiful, amazing, exquisitely complex, little Earth, to include all the forms of life is sooo hard to fit into a coaching framework.
I'm feeling a palpable sense of relief from reading your post.
Anything I can do to bring some relief and support to your life makes me happy. Bless your beautiful work Helen.
I appreciate the point and counter point… a left and a right… one analogy reading this is going from boxing to defeat my opponent and shifting into paddling a mysterious river…
Left and right. My frames that echo this are therapy (20years for me learning and applying this trade) and mentoring (10 years of being courted and loved into being by mentors - alive and dead, human and of nature)…
I’d like to conclude that both have a place and that I can keep one foot — as I have for a while — in both worlds. But I honestly feel myself yearning the retire the first endeavour and live more fully in the mystery of the later.
Another analogy that comes to mind is studying martial arts and ethical use of violence. There can be a mechanistic way of breaking it down and repeating of patterns towards the hope of mastery. And yet, when I spar or am met in the real world by conflict, all concepts seem inadequate and less helpful….
All there is is an encounter, my hope to stay open, attentive and learn from what transpires and that I come out of it not too badly injured so I get to keep learning and apply my theories into what can help it be resolved better next time…
You got me into a mood reading this… thank you for spinning this web to lean into before bed.
Wildy useful (to me) in this right now moment. Thank you for pressing publish on this draft today.
What an enormous relief it is to have read this today, thank you.
So glad to hear. I'd love to hear what felt relieving to you.
Thank you Tad. WIth my training as an executive coach, I can recognize most of how you describe coaching as accurate. However, there are points where my training and style definitely diverge from what you've shared here. The culture work, on the other hand, rings true with every statement. In fact, you helped me clarify some important differences in my work with folks, and I appreciate it.
Aye. It's important to note that not all coaching approaches or schools have the same underlying worldview. Some are much more culturally informed than others.
Too true. SO many variations on a theme. Even as I was reading your descriptions of coaching I noticed that only some of them apply to you. I wondered if you only included those that applied to you, and your particularly brilliant method, if the entire piece would read differently. I imagine it would. Yours appears to be much more culturally informed, though is very aware of the mainstream method for advertising, marketing, and sales. I've always appreciated your rendering on the matter.
huh. Good point. I'll ponder...
This was what I was going to comment. The way I was trained as a coach and how I coach (which I call Wayfinding in a nod to my mentor) is very, very different than the coaching you described. And yet what you described is something I see a lot of in the coaching space.
I also deeply appreciated your take on culture. Such important work. Thank you for sharing.🙏
Nice affirmation of why I couldn't do coaching, way back when it was a new thing and I tried it out.
But I don't get what they have in common at all.
Thank you for this. So good to be reading your words again Tad, welcome back.
I opened your article with deep interest, as I work in both areas.
I close it with a deeper understanding of why I have resisted much of the ‘coach’ approach for the last decade, despite being a coach (and counsellor) throughout.
For every point you made, my spirit cringed at the coach description (recognizing where I’ve seen it enacted by peers and community around me) and sighed with relief and resonance at the cultural description.
It may be time to change my language of how I refer to my work, which is highly personal, yet imperatively contextualized by culture and impacts - both way.
Thank you, Tad. This is a gift.